THE EFFECTS OF EXPLICIT STORY GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION ON THE NARRATIVE SKILLS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of large-group, explicit, story grammar vocabulary instruction during shared storybook reading on the narrative retell skills of preschoolers. Two preschool classrooms in rural, southeastern Illinois participated in the study. The study examined narrative retell ability via the Test of Narrative Retell-Preschool. Scores were compared for the experimental group, who received instruction from the investigator, to the control group, who received instruction from their regular classroom teacher. The study also explored instructional practices during shared storybook reading through observational checklists of recorded sessions. The results of the study indicated that students who received experimental instruction showed significant gains in scores for character, setting, and emotion on the Test of Narrative Retell-Preschool, but these gains were not significantly higher than the control group students, who also showed significant gains in scores throughout the six-week study

A 10-Year Retrospective Case Study of the Relation between Four Summative Assessment Measures in a Graduate Speech-Language Pathology Program

Assessment is essential to ensure that quality levels of teaching and learning are maintained in graduate programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). In this article, we present a ten-year retrospective case study of one CSD master’s program approach to address speech-language pathology program-level summative assessment. We evaluated the strength of the relation between three departmental summative measures (i.e., Grand Rounds [Capstone Course] final grade percentages, Written Comprehensive examinations, Oral Comprehensive examinations) and the national Praxis Examination in Speech-Language Pathology (5331). The strongest correlations were between the Grand Rounds final grade percentages, Written Comprehensive examinations, and the Praxis. The weakest correlations were between the Oral Comprehensive examinations and the other examination types. The study findings demonstrate the concurrent validity of Grand Rounds final grade percentages, Written Comprehensive examinations, and the Praxis. Capstone courses should be considered for their benefit in Praxis preparation, whereas oral comprehensive examinations may better serve as formative rather than summative assessment

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival